Freaktana A Major Disappointment

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

AaronCapenBanner Roy Thinnes stars as author David Norliss, doing research for a book on the supernatural, who mysteriously disappears, but leaves behind a series of audio tapes detailing the case he was investigating, revolving around Angie Dickinson playing a wife trying to uncover the mysterious death of her husband, which takes a sinister turn as events unfold...Roy Thinnes portrays Norliss with the same steely, no-nonsense determination he gave to David Vincent from his previous series "The Invaders". Some find his humorlessness off-putting, but I find it a refreshing change from the norm.Made as a pilot film to a proposed series that was never picked up, which I think is a great pity, since I found Norliss and this case quite interesting, and would like to know what became of him, either with a sequel film and/or TV series.As a consequence, this character remains an intriguing enigma.

MartinHafer "The Norliss Tapes" is a TV movie that was originally intended as a pilot for a TV series--one that never materialized. Dan Curtis (who created the original "Dark Shadows" and made some great monster films in the 70s) was shopping this show as well as "Kolchak" (with Darren McGavin) at around the same time. Both shows were essentially the same sort of thing--with very few differences. Curtis made two Kolchak pilots, re-arranged the show and made Norliss. Oddly, "The Norliss Tapes" aired only a few weeks after the second Kolchak film ("The Night Strangler"). Perhaps he was just trying to cover all the bases. Soon Kolchak was okayed by ABC and aired as a series for one season. Both involved writers who investigated so-called monsters--and in each, the monsters turned out to be true! The only major difference was that Norliss was a darker show--with a less comedic style.This one begins with a writer, David Norliss (Roy Thinnes) disappearing. His publisher is worried and all they find are a stack of cassette tapes. When the publisher places one of the tapes in the cassette player, the story begins. Presumably, had the show been picked up, each episode would have been a flashback instigated by the playing of yet another of these tapes.The monster in this one is a dead man. His zombie body returns--and naturally scares the crap out of his wife (Angie Dickenson) when it tears his dog to pieces and tries to kill her. However, no one believes her and the only one who will listen is Norliss--and at first he doesn't believe her. Not surprisingly, the local sheriff (Claude Akins) doesn't believe her stories about a giant smurf-like zombie! What does some magic ring have to do with this and how can Norliss help her? I would say that this show wasn't quite as enjoyable as the two Kolchak pilots ("The Night Stalker" and "The Night Strangler")--but it is quite enjoyable in a campy way. Worth a look to see what might have been.

MARIO GAUCI This was horror exponent Curtis' follow-up to the popular made-for-TV genre efforts THE NIGHT STALKER (1971) and THE NIGHT STRANGLER (1972), featuring Darren McGavin as Carl Kolchak, but with a new protagonist in Roy Thinnes' David Norliss. The overall style (down to the intermittent narration) and supernatural theme involved are remarkably similar – though the San Francisco-based writer hero in this case is much more somber than the wisecracking but dogged reporter from Chicago. These two elements actually spelt doom for the Norliss character as it seems that when it was time to create a full-blown series (even if it extended to just one season and 20 episodes), the choice fell upon the humor-tinged exploits of Kolchak… In any case, the premise itself – dying sculptor turns to the occult and is allowed to 'come back' in return for 'giving life' through his work to a demon – is undeniably intriguing; the creepily effective zombie make-up (these scenes naturally constitute the film's highlights) resembles the one seen in DEATHDREAM (1972). Though the abrupt finale actually leaves Norliss' fate hanging, this can be excused – since the film was obviously conceived as a pilot, so that his story was intended to resume in subsequent installments! Incidentally, there are a couple of other illogicalities owing to the necessary streamlining: while the events related in the film are seen to fit on just one tape, the final session in the creation of the sculpture entails no more than a couple of brief strokes to the eyes! Supporting Thinnes (by the way, I've just acquired Season One of the vintage sci-fi series THE INVADERS [1967-8], which had actually made his name – though I probably won't be able to include it in this Halloween challenge) is a good cast: Don Porter (appearing as Norliss' publisher), Angie Dickinson (the sculptor's wife), Michele Carey (her sister and a Norliss acquaintance), Claude Akins (the requisite disbelieving sheriff), Vonetta McGee (the occultist who gave the sculptor the magical ring which enabled his subsequent resurrection) and Hurd Hatfield (a debonair but shady patron of the arts with ambitions above his station). For the record, I'll be following this with two of Dan Curtis' feature-films – HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS (1970) and NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS (1971); I had also intended to check out his TV version of THE TURN OF THE SCREW (1974), but I decided to leave it for an eventual triple-bill of adaptations of the Henry James source novel along with THE INNOCENTS (1961) and THE NIGHTCOMERS (1971).

artsyrenee This movie scared the #$%@* out of me!!!! I watched it when I was a kid and I LOVED it! It's just like The Night Stalker! It has a top notch cast of actors which makes all the difference in the world. The music is eerie, the location is scary and all of the typical Dan Curtis tricky shock effects are in place. The scene where her sister opens the curtains and James Cort is there staring at her is truly priceless! They don't make them like this anymore. I found it on eBay (just type in the movie name in the Ebay search) but the quality was terrible because it has never been released on VHS. I watched the whole thing anyway despite the poor picture quality. :) Would love to find a good copy of it.